


Disappearances

by carolc24



Series: UT/MH crossover nonsense [2]
Category: Marble Hornets, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Papyrus, Babybones, Big Brother Sans, Gen, Papyrus is followed by the Operator, Reality Warping, Sans messes up a lot but he's doing his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolc24/pseuds/carolc24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Papyrus goes missing three times.  Sans finds him each time.  (Should make sense even if you aren't familiar with Marble Hornets or the Slender Man mythos.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disappearances

The first time Papyrus disappears, Sans panics.

He searches every corner of the house, over and over again, before he accepts that Papyrus isn’t there. He runs up and down the streets of Snowdin Town, calling his name. He checks with all of the local establishments, even Grillby’s, where Papyrus hates going. The guard dogs offer to help him look after that. When they finally trek into the forest, Sans is at the point of despairing.

They find him deep into the forest, so far from the path that Sans is knee deep in years-old snow. He’s shivering so hard that Sans can hear his bones rattling from several feet away, and while his expression is blank, there are tear tracks on his face.

Sans doesn’t have time to see him react before he half-runs, half trips towards him and scoops him up into his arms. He thinks he’s also shaking, now. He tries to focus on transferring what little body heat he had to Papyrus while they follow the dogs back to town.

That night, Papyrus is wrapped up in blankets and holding a mug of warm milk when he tries to explain what happened. He says he doesn’t understand, he just woke up in a weird little building in the middle of the woods, and his head hurt, and he was trying to get home, but he didn’t know which way to go, so he just kept walking straight until Sans found him. Sans remembers accidentally teleporting when he was Papyrus’s age, but it was only by a few feet.

Papyrus doesn’t sleep that night. None of the people Sans asks seem to have any idea what could have happened. So Sans keeps a close eye on Papyrus for as long as he can, before the bills catch up to him and he has to go back to work.

The second time Papyrus disappears, Sans teleports directly to the spot where he was the first time. It doesn’t take long to find him, digging a path for himself in the deep snow and looking nervous, but determined. Before they leave, Sans asks if he woke up in the shack again. Papyrus said he did, and Sans follows his tracks until they stop in a small, empty clearing. There’s no shack in sight, and Papyrus insists it was there, but nothing is there, and Sans wonders if Papyrus is lying.

He teleports them home, and Papyrus all but shuts down, curling up into a ball and emitting a low whine. He doesn’t relax until Sans drapes his favorite blanket onto his shoulders, when he buries his face into the fleece and rubs his hands along the silky edges. Sans doesn’t try to teleport him after that.

The next day, he tells Papyrus that if it happens again, he should stay in the shack until Sans finds him. Papyrus looks fearful at that suggestion, and says that he’d be easier to find if he leaves tracks for Sans to follow instead of staying in one place.

Sans asks if he’s ever seen anyone else in the shack. He says no, but his voice is quiet and hesitant, like he isn’t sure. He looks as if it’s painful to think about, so Sans drops the issue and hopes it doesn’t happen again.

After that, Papyrus is much more particular about his surroundings. He doesn’t let Sans come into his room most of the time, and when he does permit it, he tells him not to touch anything. Sans wants to think it’s just a part of growing up, but the urgency of his voice makes him think otherwise.

The third time happens after Sans ignores his brother’s requests. Papyrus had fallen asleep on the couch, and Sans carried him up to his bed so he wouldn’t hurt his back. He also saw that one of his action figures was broken, and took it downstairs so he could repair it that night.

Papyrus is still asleep the next day when Sans leaves for work. He’s gone when Sans comes home.

This time, Sans finds him much closer to town, walking away from the path. His movements are heavy, like he’s been walking for hours, but he doesn’t stop until Sans calls out to him.

His expression is confused. “Sans?” He looks at Sans, and then in the direction he was walking.

“Where are you going?” Sans notices the edge of desperation in his voice, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to understand.

“…I was trying to get home… why did you come from that way?” He still looks confused, and almost mistrusting. As if he’s wondering if Sans is trying to trick him somehow.

“I came from home, Papyrus… Did you wake up in the shack again?”

He shakes his head. “No I woke up in… That’s not home, Sans. It looks like home, but it isn’t.”

Now Sans is the one who’s confused. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, it isn’t home?”

Papyrus’s face at that reminds Sans of when they would play Monsters and Humans, and Sans would do something that didn’t match the story Papyrus constructed, and Papyrus would slip out of character to explain what he did wrong. Except now, Sans was contradicting the real world, in Papyrus’s eyes.

“You don’t /get/ it, Sans. It looks like home, but it’s just a trick. I fell asleep on the couch and woke up in my bed, and my Wendy Waters wasn’t there, even though I put her on my desk last night.” He grabs Sans’s hand and moves as if to pull him further away from the path. “We need to get away from there, we need to get home before-”

“Papyrus,” Sans finds his voice, and suppresses the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I carried you upstairs last night. And I took your Wendy Waters, so I could glue her arm back on for you. I’m sorry.”

Papyrus drops his hand and glares. “You’re lying. This is part of the trick, isn’t it? Trying to get me to go back so it can get me?” His voice is suddenly shrill and wobbly. “I’m not that stupid, you know! That isn’t even Sans’s jacket! His jackets all have that gross red stuff on it, that one’s way too clean to-”

Sans takes off his jacket. He points to the ketchup stains on his shirt, then hands the jacket to Papyrus for him to examine. It doesn’t take him long to locate stains on the sleeves and the inside lining. He reaches into one of the pockets, and there’s the action figure, exactly the same as before with a rough seam where the arm had broken off.

Papyrus stares at it for a minute, then hands the jacket back to Sans. “Sorry.” He looks a bit ashamed of himself before he glares again. “But you shouldn’t have taken my stuff! I told you not to, and everything!”

“I know, dude,” Sans says weakly. He puts his jacket back on, and thanks the universe that he had eaten lunch at Grillby’s today. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

Papyrus hesitates, then starts trudging back towards the path. He looks almost ready to collapse from exhaustion, but he doesn’t let Sans carry him home. Sans can’t really blame him.

Neither of them sleep that night. Papyrus is still jumpy, looking out the window he hears a noise and watching Sans carefully the rest of the time. He touches every object he can reach in the living room, maybe checking if it’s the real thing or just an illusion created by some unknown horror. He goes to his room, probably to continue the process there. Sans thinks he can hear him talking to himself as he paces around. But he doesn’t dare disturb him.

If Papyrus disappears again, or thinks that Sans is an impostor trying to capture him, Sans never finds out about it. But even when both of them are grown, there’s a part of him that still expects to come home to an empty house, and discover a pile of dust somewhere in the middle of the woods.

Watching him die to the human is almost a relief. At least he knows what happened.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is at uselessshoelacefacts.tumblr.com if you want to talk about UT or MH.


End file.
